12 Careers in Government and Industry

There are many
exciting career opportunities in government and industry.
Even if you firmly believe that you will spend your life
as an academic, you may find yourself making a career
change later, or doing some part-time consulting.
Since the average person makes several job changes over
the course of a career, it is important to keep your options
open. In this section we focus on the attractions of
non-academic jobs and on the job search process.

There are some major differences between the
university environment and the industrial/laboratory
one:

Industrial jobs give you access to state-of-the-art
equipment and give you influence over the next generation
of equipment.

Unless you really enjoy teaching, you are doing yourself
and the students a disservice if you take an academic job.

Industry gives you opportunities for profit sharing and
entrepreneurship.

There are many varieties of nonacademic jobs:

A consulting job can provide flexible hours, a variety
of work experience, and a chance to be your own boss.
A consultant sells his/her services on a short or long term
basis to an organization that needs a particular set of skills.
The successful consultant must be flexible, work well
under tight deadlines, be a good salesperson for
his/her expertise, and tolerate risk well.

An entrepreneur establishes a new business
and markets a product or service.

A government lab usually focusses on a particular
set of research problems, related to the agency's mission -
defense, energy, etc. Laboratories
can provide good interdisciplinary
opportunities, job security, and a healthy research environment.

An established company may have needs for
research and development or for support services
for their products or customers.

Some organizations engage in classified research -
particularly, some Department of Defense labs, National
Security Agency, and Department of Energy labs.
At installations such as this, some percentage of your time might
be spent in research that cannot be made public. This work is
important and interesting, but will do nothing to enhance your
prospects for a move to a non-classified installation. If job mobility is important
to you, then it is vital that you keep a high public profile as well,
continuing to do research that can be published openly, and continuing
to attend conferences in your research area.

Private industry hires people who can contribute in some
way to the company's ``bottom line" of profits.
Different companies evaluate the contribution in different ways.
At one end of the spectrum are companies who operate
labs like Google, Xerox Parc, or IBM,
where management has believed
that a relatively unfettered research environment will lead to unexpected
advances, some of which will generate new commercial products.
Although people are encouraged to become involved in some
less speculative work, a major part of their time can be
spent in work much like that of universities.
At the other end of the spectrum are companies that focus
on short-term, product-specific tasks that lead to
research questions whose answers will have immediate impact.

Again, an important consideration is how openly you will
be allowed to talk about your work. Some companies do
classified research, and others protect their research and
their products as trade secrets or by copyright or patent.

Success in a research job may ultimately lead to a job in management
of research. Many corporations make the mistake of making the
management track the only path to high salaries, although more
enlightened companies recognize the importance of rewarding senior
researchers who do not choose (or have no aptitude for) management.
A good manager understands the concerns of the researchers he/she
manages and acts as buffer and advocate. A good manager is
a filter, suppressing the ``noise''
from higher level management while keeping the unit informed
of important news. At the same time, a good manager presents the
unit's case for resources and keeps higher management
aware of the unit's accomplishments and value.

In an medium or large size organization,
your first tasks will probably involve close team work
with a more experienced colleague with similar background.
You may participate in a project that is well underway,
making a specific contribution to software, mathematical
formulation, or modeling. Or you may be brought into
a beginning project that you will help to shape and then
make a fairly well-defined contribution.
Evaluation of your work will include the quality of
your contribution, your attention
to deadlines, your ability to work harmoniously with
others, and your oral and written communication skills.

After you have some experience, you may
be asked to work more independently, perhaps
serving as the sole person
on a project with your particular specialty.
For instance, Margaret Wright of Bell Labs speaks
of a project that involved studying radio signal
propagation in a building. The team involved one
engineer,
expert in radio signal modeling, two mathematicians,
expert in
numerical optimization, and one computer scientist,
expert in graph algorithms.
An important ingredient in such projects is mutual
respect among the team members so that they
can trust that the pieces of the project that
they only vaguely understand are being handled well.
Team members must
contribute responsibly and be wise enough to ask
help from people outside the team when they are
unsure of themselves.

Further on, you may be asked to lead a team
or perhaps direct a research division.
This requires a whole new set of skills and
you should be prepared for some retraining
to meet a new set of challenges.

There are several things you can do (beginning in your
first year of graduate study!) that will make
the prospects of success in an industrial environment more
likely.
Check the list in the academic career section (Section 11)
- all of that advice applies here.
Work experience is invaluable. Look for opportunities
to work in industry for a summer or a semester. Look for industrial
workshops that will give you a chance to work on applied
problems for an intensive session, preferably in a multi-disciplinary
environment.

Obtain some breadth of background. In interacting with engineers or
biologists or physical scientists, it is invaluable to know the
vocabulary and to be able to understand the underlying principles.
Broaden your areas of expertise through course work or seminar
attendance.

Industrial and government positions tend to work on a shorter time
scale than academic ones. It might take several months to
have the paperwork progress through the system and be called for an
interview, but (at least for unclassified work) the time between
interview, offer, and starting data is often quite short.

As in finding an academic job, consult your advisor and
other faculty members, and use any contacts you have to
inquire about positions.

Choose as references faculty members who know your work well.
Also try to include people who have supervised your work
or industrial contacts who find your research useful.
Talk to them about your goals and provide them with a transcript,
dissertation summary, and resume. Ask for advice on whom to
contact.

Your resume should give your educational
background, awards,
publications, conference presentations,
and a list of 3-5 references with addresses.
You should list an objective; e.g., ``a research
position that applies skills in x, y, and z to
w."
If you have practical experience of any kind, highlight it on the
resume.

Your cover letter can be brief, but express some enthusiasm for
the organization and position you are applying for.
Make a clear statement of your research accomplishments
and research goals, and mention your
advisor's name.
Also provide a one page research summary.

Apply to every company you are particularly interested
in, even if it is not currently advertising.
Sometimes positions become available unexpectedly, and
an interesting application can trigger
a position.

Watch technical publications (SIAM News, Communications of the ACM, IEEE Computer, etc.) for
ads. Contact your university's career center. Attend
job fairs. Use Internet resources of job listings, maintained
by the professional societies and others. Consider contacting
a ``head hunter," an employment agency that circulates your
resume to interested companies, charging the company a fee
if you are hired.

Interviewing can be exhausting. Often appointments and
talks span a 13 hour period each day.
The first few interviews are fun, but it is difficult
to keep up enthusiasm over a long series.
Choose carefully if you have many invitations.

Check the advice in the academic career section (Section 11)
for information on interviews and the aftermath.